1. Field of the Application
This disclosure relates to a material for transferring heat, and more particularly to a flexible heat pipe material used to fabricate wearable heat pipe garments and other flexible heat pipe devices.
2. Background
Maintaining normal body temperature is of great importance to mammals, including human beings, both for comfort and to maintain natural body functionality. Clothing is one approach to assist the body in maintaining its optimum temperature range. Traditional clothing has, however, relied primarily on the thermal conductance—or lack thereof—of the materials used to fabricate the garments to achieve this assistance.
Another, more recent approach, has been to create more active garments in which heat is transferred to or away from the body by specially designed structures including, but not limited to, heat pipes.
Traditional heat pipes are rigid tubes and have interiors that are typically at a reduced pressure compared to the surrounding atmosphere. Wearable garments require a certain degree of flexibility. Adapting heat pipe technology to function in a form that is flexible enough for comfortable, wearable garments therefore presents a number of problems, including, but not limited to, how to extract heat from a sufficiently large surface area while maintaining sufficient flexibility.
Nevertheless, several attempts have been made to adapt heat pipe and heat pipe related technology for use in wearable garments.